My dad is a world-renowned outdoorsman. His career was in the outdoors industry but it’s also what we did for fun. I grew up in beautiful rural Alberta, and my earliest memory of doing something with my dad was fishing at three years old.
My dad was always inviting my brother and me into adventure. If he was home and not working, there was always an outdoorish endeavor in the works. Often, we would come home from school and find him loading up the truck for whatever fun he was rustling up for that night. We’d throw down our backpacks and grab our rubber boots. He taught us how to shoot BB guns at soda cans and .22s at tiny black metal animals that would fall into a wooden catch that he built for us. We shot little recurve bows into a hay bale in our backyard. In the summer we paddled a yellow dingy around the lake behind our house. We made creekside campfires on northern summer nights when the sun stays high until 10 p.m. By the time I was 8, I could bait my own hook, gut a fish, load a .22, start a campfire and tell the difference between elk, deer and moose tracks. In the winter, we ran a rabbit trapline, tromping through the deep snow behind dad. We ice fished with two hooks on a line and pulled up perch in twos for hours. My childhood was idyllic in so many ways. I lived an adventure with my dad every week of my little girl life. The adventures weren’t just for boys and I was welcomed into every one of them. It was time with dad and I was all in, whatever the adventure was.
As I got older and more into doing my own thing, I said “yes” to adventures with my dad less and less. He had to try to zero in on the new things I was interested in to get to spend time with me, and something of what we had was lost. I have a picture of him stuffed into a suit, taking me to the opera when I was 14, trying hard to stay connected to me as I grew and morphed into someone different (my bangs were epic). Our adventures grew few and farther between and I got busy with my own pursuits that really didn’t have space for a dad. It’s a normal progression, albeit sad.
When I got married, dad made my husband his new adventure partner and I was thrilled for them to have that connection. When I had kids, my dad pursued them the same way he had pursued me. They went fishing and shooting and trapping and filled up their adventure punch cards with him. It has been heartwarming and fun to watch all of that happen. It takes me back to a time in my childhood when I was dad’s adventure buddy, a time that had long passed.
Until October.
I went home to Canada to visit and check on my parents in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. It meant I had to quarantine with them for two weeks, which is a rare amount of time to spend with your parents, as an adult. It was a glorious October in Alberta with the snow mercifully holding back and the trees as neon yellow and orange as I had ever seen them. Dad was wanting to get out and scout some areas to put up treestands and I offered to lend a hand. The nostalgia was thick for me as we loaded up the truck. Being the only kid in the front of the truck with my dad again was surreal; it made me need us to stop for ice cream. When we got to our first scouting location, he handed me a walking stick and I fell in behind him. We were ten yards in and my mind was snapped back open to everything I know because of being in that very position—tromping around behind dad.
I know things most girls don’t know. I know the difference between a whitetail and a mule deer and I know the rhythm of 10 and 2 on a fly rod before you lay that fly down gently on the water. I know which wild mushrooms you can eat. I know the difference between a cutthroat and a brook trout. I know proper archery posture and when to breathe when you take your shot. I know how to approximate what a set of antlers will score on the Boone and Crocket scale. I know how to set a hook, cut the sinew off of a backstrap and what to do if I surprise a grizzly bear.
I know so much stuff. I may not use it every day, but it has been imparted to me through the faithful, steady, engaging presence of my dad. As we walked along a muddy riverbed that day last October, I felt a whisper in my heart that took my breath away. “It was never about the what. It was always about the with.”
That word has such deep meaning for me, thanks to my friend Allen Arnold and his unfolding of it in his book, “The Story of With.” Allen proposes that it is indeed the better way. The with.
The time. The miles. The shared beauty. The way dad never sat me down and gave me a lecture about deer. I just picked it up by being in his presence. He was always gently talking about what we were doing and why and there was never a test. There was never anything to prove, only an experience to be enjoyed. My brother and I picked up a wealth of knowledge about the outdoors because of the way our dad included and engaged us. It is the way he offered what he knew in an experiential, time spent kind of way. We wanted the with. The wild and varied skillset we have now is just a byproduct of all of the with.
If dad had been a farmer, I suppose I would know the best time to harvest alfalfa. If he had been a baker, I would likely have sourdough nailed by now. But like the whisper in my heart on the riverbed in October, it is never about the what. The impartation is just a byproduct of the with. The with is how I knew I was valuable and worth spending endless hours of time with. The with was love and it set the stage for me to believe I was loveable. He wanted to be WITH me.
Every day I had left of that precious October with my parents, I jumped at the chance for more with. I don’t get to know how much time I will have with my dad so I was all in for anything with him. I got up every morning and asked what adventure we would be on that day. We set up treestands, monitored the game cameras, cut down tamaracks for bow building and I watched and listened as he flint-knapped a knife from beginning to end.
Nothing but the with matters.
